This is a gorgeous view – I’ve always loved the Mediterranean. But I miss Paris and everything it was to me. I miss the beauty and the ugliness, the exquisite morning light and the mournful greys. Despite the reason I left, I’ll always think of it as the place I was the happiest, the most alive, the most loved – all in more ways than one. Remembering the good times is the worst part.
The night it all began I lay awake with my mother’s words on repeat in my head. I was not so much thinking about Philippe having another woman as the time I was the woman he wanted. We met at a very chic party hosted by a wealthy art dealer in his huge house near the Bois de Vincennes. I rarely attended such fancy events and once I’d become separated from my companions I felt more uncomfortable than ever in my one posh dress, a fitted black shift with a daring neckline and transparent half-sleeves, falling away at the elbow. Together with my highest heels it was the kind of dress that says I feel good about myself. Sexy, even. I want men to look at me. But I didn’t. I really didn’t. Five years after the broken engagement that brought me to Paris I had lowered my expectations of love. I couldn’t seem to let it happen, sabotaging occasional forays into dating even if it was going well. Especially then. I hurt men’s feelings trying to protect my own. On a slow descent into loneliness, I’d started to think it was probably for the best. I was only thirty-five.
I was about to leave the party when Philippe struck up a conversation with me next to the chocolate fountain, which had an accompanying mountain of the most sublime profiteroles. ‘It’s the exact colour of your eyes,’ he said, of the chocolate, a lighter, much warmer shade than the sauce served in restaurants. The aroma it gave off was so delicious I could practically taste it. I was searching for a response to this terrible chat-up line when the young woman replenishing the fountain with cocoa nibs looked at me and said, ‘He’s absolutely right, you know.’
So I looked again at this tall, rather attractive older man who knew all about colour, and shape, line and texture, as I would soon discover.
‘I’ve been looking at you all evening,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t help it.’
I felt myself smile. It could have sounded very different, as if he’d been mentally undressing me, only after one thing. But it was never like that with me and Philippe. I could see he was nervous. He hadn’t only waited to see if I was with anyone but to work up the courage. ‘You shouldn’t have waited so long,’ I said, ‘it’s not been the best night.’ But now it was as if the brightness had been adjusted in the magnificent room full of glamorous people and flowers and paintings. He invited me to go for a drink elsewhere and before we’d even left it felt like the start of something.
We drank champagne in a hotel bar and talked into the early hours. Philippe knew Editions Gallici and he liked what we did. He told me about his gallery. We traded tales of London and New York, where I’d done my masters, both of them cities he knew well. He was captivated by my foreignness, telling me he’d guessed before we spoke that I wasn’t French. Like me he was a fan of Jeffrey Eugenides, though he said his English wasn’t up to reading the original.
We’d both been through bad times, which for some inexplicable reason we didn’t hesitate to share. Affected by his openness about a bitter divorce, by the time he saw me home in a cab I’d told him things I’d only ever confided in my friend Emily; things I’ll have to tell you, although God knows how. In the bar, he had laid his hand on mine a couple of times, no more, and now he asked if he could kiss me, no more, when I was aching to be held. I found that sweet and old-fashioned – as well as disappointing – but it gave my body the chance to wake up, to reacclimatise to the possibility of being wanted. Of wanting.
He made up for it with the kiss.
The next day, waiting for a call I knew he’d make, I panicked, purchasing a weightless pile of matching lingerie and slinky nightgowns I couldn’t afford, my sexual allure in serious need of a revamp. Within days I had a lover, within months, a husband; but the loss I felt most keenly in the sleepless hours following my mother’s observation was that of my closest friend, even after he came home and lay down next to me.
* * *
It’s okay. I’ll be all right in a minute. I don’t understand; I was fine last time. I haven’t cried like that since all this happened. Haven’t dared. Now my face will be all pillowed-up. Some tears can’t be wiped away; they soak in and for a while the pain you’re schlepping is on the outside for all to see. I saw this so often in my mother’s face that it became normal, but it’s not me at all.
Everybody knows life’s not all plain sailing. It has its downs and ups: it’s like there’s a league table of adversity. Some of it is just part of the deal: the inevitable bad patches with love, work and money. Health problems. Losing your parents and shifting up a notch on the ladder of mortality. Family has a lot to answer for. Sooner or later friends begin to disappear.
In the second column are the cruel and exceptional losses, the tragedies most people will never experience first-hand. But for those who do, surviving one offers no protection against the others, as I am proof. Both ‘my’ tragedies have had the shape people are programmed to seek in the search for sense where there is none: a before/after, identifiable victims, an obvious person to blame. But whereas my brother’s accident decimated my family in seconds, sad to say, our marital crisis in its early stages was nothing out of the ordinary: cheating husband, aggrieved wife. It was impossible to pinpoint when it all started to go wrong between Philippe and me.
But I had the most vivid memory of the last time things were right. It was late September, just eight months earlier. We took a walk to see the new floating gardens that had just opened on the banks of the Seine and witnessed a sunset that was the last-minute reward for a grey day: the sky mottled with scraps of cloud, backlit with a blaze of violet and grenadine that poured down onto the river. It was before they started raising the gangways at dusk. We lay on one of the two-person wooden loungers, the pampas grass in the planters behind us swaying and rustling on the breeze. When night fell, the temperature did too. I shivered and, without a word, Philippe held me tight, my head resting in the dip of his collarbone, and we stayed there like that a long time. Certain moments of heightened emotion are seared into me, and this was one, if you can say that of something so overwhelmingly tender.
Enough tears for one day.
Chapter Three
The next evening Philippe, my mother and I had dinner plans with the Malavoines, who had assumed such a significant role in her imagination over the years that she had asked to meet them. It was a wish which they and Philippe seemed happy to accommodate.
I’d known Geneviève and Henri almost exactly the same time as I’d known my husband, but it felt far longer than five years. When Philippe and I married just four months after we met, it was as if I got this other couple thrown in for free. But there was a cost. Since my husband’s relationship with the Malavoines was personal and professional, our circles overlapped to an extraordinary degree. Even when it wasn’t planned, we would bump into them most everywhere we went.
Philippe and Henri were both from Nice and their families were close. Ten years older and a successful fine art auctioneer by the time Philippe arrived in Paris, Henri assumed the role of mentor, father figure and older brother and Philippe couldn’t have established the gallery without his backing. In the early days of our marriage, I thought the Malavoines’ money came from Henri but it didn’t take long to realise my mistake. And in fact it was Geneviève my mother really wanted to meet. I mentioned her and Henri often, as you would anyone you see all the time.
‘I can’t think why you’ve never introduced us,’ Mom said. They would have met at our wedding but I wasn’t about to rake that up. I should have tried to explain what it would mean for her to be part of something good that was happening to me. She was leaning awkwardly over the mantelpiece to apply a new deep red lipstick, the poor light and speckled antique mirror offering less than ideal conditions to attend to
one’s maquillage. When I heard that the girl at the Chanel counter had helped her match it to the dress she’d bought that afternoon I felt a twinge. I was busy but I could have found time to take her shopping, even if only to the BHV department store minutes from the office. Not everyone had my familiarity with the Pantone chart but the lipstick was two, possibly three, shades off for the dress and too bright for a woman of my mother’s age and complexion. And yet she had the kind of beauty that was more touching faded than it ever was in bloom. She used to be a life model in her art student days in San Francisco.
Anyone who saw us together would instantly know we were mother and daughter but I’ve never been beautiful in that way that is almost a burden. Christopher was the pretty one. I am striking, with the kind of face which constantly makes people ask what I’m thinking, as if I’d tell them. On the plus side, it’s a face that suits me better than when I was younger – you might say I’ve finally grown into my looks. The source of my most prominent physical imperfection is also the means of registering it: my eyes are too close together. But being good with a brush, I soon figured out a way to minimise it using dark colour and heavier mascara on the outer edge of my eyelids. I pluck my eyebrows as wide apart as I can get away with.
Mom’s new red dress was absolutely perfect and I’d told her so.
‘It honestly never occurred to me to get you together,’ I said, referring to Geneviève. I’d come to Paris to draw a line between my current and former lives, with varying results. It’s always the things we want to forget that have the most tenacious grip: the grief, the rejection, the accumulation of humiliations. It was ten times harder when my mother was in town, stirring up a maelstrom which took weeks to still.
‘Geneviève is charming,’ I said, hoping Mom would understand that this was what was required of her in return. It was years since I’d witnessed her in the company of others and I was trying not to dwell on the worst possible scenario. Evidently there had been a few flare-ups during her painting trip, when she’d accused another woman of deliberately blocking her light on the first day, making herself unpopular for the duration, and complained that the resident artist paid more attention to the other painters. ‘Geneviève is actually from Paris,’ I added. ‘So please be diplomatic.’
My mother’s criticisms of the city were not entirely unfounded. Every city has its problems – there are destitute and unhappy people in Paris just like anywhere – but by acting as a magnet to me, it had made itself a target for her.
But it was still Paris, for God’s sake, famously lovely in spring but for me never more enchanting than now, in early summer when promise and delivery are in perfect balance. I made excuses for it the way I would for a person I loved. The way I privately did for my mother: she’s lonely. She’s getting older. She’s never recovered.
I’d said as much as I could with a gentle warning. It wasn’t for me to lay down conditions. When you’re responsible for something terrible as a child, your whole life ends up as an attempt at redemption. More than once I’ve felt vindicated when things went wrong for me – it must be obvious already that there’s no simple answer to ‘why I don’t think I deserve to be happy’.
My mother looked at me with the appraising eye she turns on a scene or figure she wants to paint. ‘You have good genes, Alexandra. You don’t look your age and some of that extra weight has ended up in the right places. But in your situation it’s important to make the best of yourself.’
My situation. It wasn’t just the oblique reference to Philippe that made me look away. Not once on the assault course of adolescence did Mom tell me I was smart or pretty or any of the things a girl needs to hear to believe. We were tiny figures in each other’s landscape, spoiling the picture. There’s no guarantee of closeness between a mother and daughter but we might have stood a chance if I’d grown up by her side. Whatever I’d become, I’d had to get there on my own.
In the privacy of the bedroom I wept off my mascara, starting over with a bolder touch and zero interest in the result. I swapped my chic Comptoir des Cotonniers outfit for a figure-hugging emerald dress I hadn’t worn in over a year. As I walked out to face the verdict I couldn’t have been less in the mood for the dress, for the evening, for any of it. The thought of eating made me as nauseous as the prospect of Philippe acting like nothing was up.
Mom brought her hands together in triumph. ‘That’s what I’m talking about!’ she said. I could easily have missed the tremble in her voice.
Chapter Four
‘Après vous, mesdames.’ Philippe held the door of the restaurant for us, anxious to make amends, if not to offer explanations, for his absence the night before. We had muttered only a few words in the interim – I was not inclined to interrogate him. At least we were not going to be finding ourselves alone anytime soon. He’d turned up for dinner and for now that was all I asked.
Mom gasped on entering the restaurant Geneviève had chosen. Some of the tables had a spectacular three-tier centrepiece of fruits de mer, and seeing a woman drizzle shallot vinegar onto a plump, glossy oyster made me impatient to dispense with the niceties of introduction – I was hungry after all. This was une bonne adresse, off the tourist circuit and popular with the well-heeled residents of the elegant and conservative 7th arrondissement, which was home to the Malavoines. The only jeans were designer and baseball caps didn’t stand a chance. Mirrors and soft lighting made a large proportion of the diners look ludicrously attractive and I was certain the staff had been chosen on precisely those grounds.
Henri and Geneviève stood and beamed as we approached the table. They declared themselves enchantés to meet Mom, who blushed as Geneviève kissed her on both cheeks, a habit I’d adopted on moving to France and practised with just about everyone. Henri was so quick to compliment me on my appearance that it was hard to know if Philippe’s unspontaneous agreement meant anything at all.
‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ Mom told the Malavoines, which was received with polite smiles. A Parisian would not have to hope it was all good. They would assume that was the case.
For Mom’s benefit we were all speaking English, which made everything feel strange. ‘I can hear that you’ve spent time in England,’ my mother said to Geneviève.
‘That’s right,’ she replied, pausing as the waiter dipped between them to pour champagne. ‘I studied at the Courtauld Institute. A long time ago, of course.’
‘I expect you know that Alexandra’s father was British.’
Which Geneviève did, but would have been too tactful to mention. Discretion was of the essence. My father rarely visited Europe and I had never been to Brazil, where he currently lived with wife number three. She was around my age, if I remembered correctly. Of the three of us, my dad had made the best job of getting on with his life, albeit on a trial-and-error basis. He had this endearing belief that things would eventually come right. It’s too bad the Amazon was no place for a single man to raise a daughter – it would have done me good to spend more time with him.
‘Is British,’ I pointed out. ‘He’s not dead.’
My mother waved her hand as if to say, details! ‘I was young when I met him,’ she said, to have married a British person a lapse of judgement requiring explanation. ‘It was the summer of love, in San Francisco…’
I cringed. The actual Summer of Love was a good six years before they met.
‘What a delightful story, Carolyn!’ said Henri, catching only the tail end and unaware of the minefield (or more accurately, desert) that was my mother’s love life. He proposed a toast. ‘To love.’
We all clinked glasses around the table. Philippe was misty-eyed when he turned to me, oblivious to my urge to kick him. He could be embarrassingly sentimental sometimes. In my admittedly limited experience it wasn’t the physical side of love French men were particularly good at, it was saying what women like to hear.
‘Yes indeed,’ said Mom, for once without any hint of bitterness. ‘To love. It’s a wonderful thing, if you
can find it.’
There were many definitions of love. In Paris it was the acceptable term for all kinds of goings-on. But often it just meant sex, which didn’t appear to be that hard to find.
Somehow the evening brought out the best in all of us. Philippe and Henri made an attentive double act, oozing the charm that foreign women love, especially when they reach the age when they feel invisible at home. In France men don’t stop admiring a woman who has passed the flush of youth, or any other flushes and flashes for that matter, as long as she still makes an effort. Letting yourself go was a greater crime than not being beautiful to begin with. There was only so much you could do about that.
Geneviève was surpassing herself with my mother, with a warmth she had never extended to me. It was a strange experience to see the two significant older women in my life together, their vastly different circumstances no barrier to conversation. Geneviève had been married for as long as my mom had been alone. They were both in their early sixties but mom had me and Christopher young, whereas Geneviève had come to motherhood late, her adored only child still only twenty-three years old.
Savouring a delectable raspberry tart, I found myself momentarily outside the two conversations at the table when Henri’s phone rang. Geneviève’s face betrayed a hint of displeasure when he went to answer it with a broad smile. ‘It is our son,’ he said, pointing the screen at her. ‘Allô, Jean-Luc! You’re here already?’ He listened for a moment. ‘Oh, sorry, we forgot to tell you the locks have been changed. I’ll be right there…’
Henri was halfway out of his seat when Geneviève intervened. ‘No, Henri, we’re not finished. Get him to come here. I really want to see him!’
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